The Suleymaniye Mosque

The Suleymaniye Mosque is an Ottoman mosque located in Istanbul, Turkey. It is the second largest mosque in the city and was built on the order of Sultan Suleyman. It was constructed by the Ottoman architect named Mimar Sinan. It took seven years to build and the construction was from 1550 to 1557. The mosque itself is preceded by a monumental courtyard on the west side. The courtyard has columns that are made of marble, granite, and porphyry. Porphyry is a variety of rock consisting of large-grained crystals dispersed in a fine-grained mass. It has a purple-red appearance, which is valued. Purple was the color of royalty and the rock was prized for various monuments, such as the Suleymaniye Mosque columns.

The beauty of this mosque shows the wealth of these people in Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire. They must have spent a lot of their gold and cared about this temple with a great passion. They mostly made it mainly for the Muslims to gather. They also put a lot of effort in their architecture. The architects designed this temple with much care and precision. It shows how art influences their creativity. The quality of the stones and walls of the imperial temple were of the highest value in that time. Suleyman most likely had a lot of support from the people in the empire because a lot of people in the Ottoman Empire were Muslims. He would have had some problems and disagreements from the non-Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire. The non-Muslims who lived among the Ottoman Empire would have not have liked this temple because Suleyman the Magnificent, who is a Muslim, funded the makings of this temple with a major amount of the empire's gold. The other people living in the Empire probably would have wanted the use of the gold for their needs and purposed. Instead of using their wealth to make a large Mosque, they could have used it for trade for weapons and scientific study. If used for trade and other various things, they could have had the advantage on their enemies of war.

Suleymaniye Mosque

The Suleymaniye Mosque was built under Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire. The mosque, a gigantic building, was built as a display of Suleyman's power. It was built from 1550-1557, which is actually a relatively short building time for that time period. When it was built, its dome was higher than that of any other mosque in the Ottoman Empire.
The Suleymaniye Mosque affected Ottoman civilization in many ways, having influence on every aspect of SPECS from social to scientific. It is social because in a way mosques are a place for social gatherings, and the religious interactions between people can be considered social. Also, the building of a mosque could have affected the relationships between Suleiman and his subjects, both Muslim and non-Muslim.
This is also political, because the Muslim community would probably give Suleiman more political support because his support of Islam showed them he agreed with their personal views, but the non-Muslim community would probably feel less welcome because of the expense being made for Muslim monuments.
The amount of money that must have been spent would factor into this as the economic aspect. Going deeper, this could affect economics more because of all the other things the money could have been spent on, especially since it must have been a fairly large sum for such an extravagant building. You can see from the pictures below how complex the building itself and the decorations inside are, and from that have a grasp of how much it must have cost.
It is fairly obvious how this relates to culture. The building itself, being a religious building, is cultural architecture, and because of its nature could be considered cultural art.
And last but not least, the scientific aspect. Although at first it may seem that no science would go into the simple construction of a building, the ability to make sturdy buildings that last hundreds of years really is a science. As you can see in the pictures below, especially the topmost one, the mosque had a very large dome, which takes a lot of technology and engineering to build properly and safely. And while the technique of building domes may have already been around for a very long time, the actual construction still required much careful planning. The Suleymaniye Mosque is a great example of a place where all of the aspects of SPECS come together.



I used Wikipedia as a source for background information.